I did not know that mice were actually hexapods… reminds of my calculus teacher’s story of when she put one of those sticky traps in the middle of her basement floor. When she went to check it the next morning, it had vanished, so she spent about an hour looking for some giant animal in her basement before finding out her daughter had stepped in it, gone back up to her room with it stuck to her foot, and had gotten it all over her bed and herself.

we keep finding a black insect on our cream carpet. It is very small, like half a grain of ricesize, having a very pointed nose, black in colour with a hard outer skin. when you pick it up it plays dead let it rest in your hand for a while then off it goes. we have today removed the carepet giving it a really good vacum clean the a vac’s shampoo hoping to rid us of it. Do you know A, what it is. B how best to get rid of it/ Thanks Norman

Hard to say without seeing a specimen, but it’s likely you’ve got a Carpet Beetle (how’s that for an apt name!), family Dermestidae. Their larvae eat all sorts of detritus, so they can be difficult to remove. A good cleaning will certainly help.